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Have you ever cringed when you were given a research question for a business plan or product launch and you don’t know where to start? Upon first glance, it seems impossible to find something like the total people who were locked out of their homes, or the market size for clinical trials.

As silly and rare as some of these questions may sound, I’ve found that sometimes even a small piece of research can help drive the development and execution of critical business decisions. I’ve developed a market research cheat sheet of free resources to help you gather information about market sizes, trends, competitors, pain points, pricing, key influencers and more.

Here’s a list off free sites and resources to check out:

• Leverage Library Assets – Many public libraries offer free versions of paid databases such as Hoover’s and Dun & Bradstreet (and some will even grant you remote access). I’ve found reference librarians to be helpful and passionate; many are now using online request forms. Before you panic, fill out a few of these forms at your local library and don’t rule out your alma mater library – universities have cutting-edge databases.

• Visit Industry and Government Sites – Industry organizations, non-profits, state and government organizations will often post a resources page with statistics, reports and surveys. When promoting an international trade event in Pennsylvania, I used the NewPA site to reference relevant statistics. I even found full survey reports on sites such as Pew Internet when studying adult usage of social networks.

• Use Blogs and Messageboards – Blogs and message boards can go a long way. For example, I had a client who needed a list of the top 1,000 churches for targeting his technology to Houses of Worship. Before buying an available list, I was able to obtain an Excel list of the top 1,200 churches ranked by size and contact information from a passionate church blogger! I’ve found LinkedIn’s answer page to be very helpful by posting research questions to people in targeted industries and verticals.

• Read through 10K Reports – Did you know that public companies include a section on competition and industry update/trends in their 10K reports? Even for companies I’ve researched that are private, I’ve found public companies in a similar industry to use as a benchmark. Free 10K reports are usually available through AnnualReports.com or a company’s website. Yahoo Finance also provides valuable financial information and has an easy-to-use interface.

• Subscribe to Industry Newsletters – I’ve found industry newsletters to be valuable as far as staying up-to-date with new trends and research. For example, I use Chief Marketer to stay in the loop with cutting edge marketing tactics. My firm also launched a marketing newsletter called Take 5 that is getting great feedback from marketing pros. Pick a few newsletters in your industry and stay committed to them.

• Create Targeted Searches – We can all search through Google, but the majority of us come to a dead end when looking for something rare such as the number of people locked out of their home or an emerging technology’s market size. I’ve found that using targeted searches can increase my searches 10-fold and. For example, when conducting a targeted search, be clever and include keywords such as “market size”, “billion”, “million” and/or “competitive landscape”. This has helped me find credible reports, PDF documents, surveys and articles online.

Those are some of the most useful research tactics I’ve discovered lately – how about you? Feel free to post other valuable resources in the comments to share with our readers.

(Post by Zer0 to 5ive’s Michael Levey; image “Inside the Thomas Crane Public Library, Quincy, MA.” via Creative Commons courtesy of Paul Keleher.)